Week 16

Yay! We actually have enough time to email all the people that we want! Sister Reed was dying. When she went on her email this morning, she had 31 unread emails, between all the ones she had gotten over the course of the week and the ones she has been leaving unanswered for the last few. I have no idea how long we'll be here today, but I'm pretty sure it will be for at least another hour. She's typing away pretty frantically.

It was very cold earlier this week. Very very cold.

This is in our recent convert's backyard. Yep, that's ice. It rained a ton, which flooded parts of town (yards, streets, etc), and then it froze. So, sheets of ice!

  

Tuesday, we had a great day. We taught a ton of lessons, which is always good! I love days when we get to sit down and teach for most of the day. After all, that's really what we're supposed to be doing as missionaries. Finding is more difficult, in a way, because sometimes you don't know where to start. Door to door finding is not very effective. We contacted a lot of old potential investigators this week, though, so hopefully we'll find some people to teach through that.

Wednesday, we had a REALLY awesome lesson, where one of the young women we teach told us that she had decided that she wanted to get baptized! We were talking about her scripture study, and she has been reading every day, even though I think she has dyslexia, so it's not easy for her. We were talking about how she can feel closer to God through her scripture study, and she said, "I think that I need to get baptized so I can feel that way." Sister Reed and I were a little taken aback--it's always such a good surprise--and then we were like, "Yep! That sounds like a good plan to us!" haha.

We also had a fantastic district meeting on Wednesday. We had a training by our district leader, and he was talking about our motivations. He drew a triangle on the board, and divided it into four sections. Basically, the lowest motivation is fear. Plenty of people obey God out of fear of consequences, fear of hell, whatever. And they will be blessed, because they are at least doing the things that are right. The next motivation is duty. Some people obey out of a sense of duty, like this is what they should be doing. And that's fine as well. We should serve God, because it is a duty. Then, the next motivation is blessings. Some people obey because they know that obedience brings blessings. So they will receive blessings! But the highest motivation, the real reason that we should serve and obey God, is out of love. We should love God and love our neighbor. I wish I had clip art or something so I could draw it out better.

Then, the next day, we had exchanges! I've talked about exchanges before, I think, but this time was a little different. The biggest thing?

I LEFT POPLAR BLUFF! dun dun dun...

Haha. See, before, the two sister training leaders (STLs) would come to our area, and we would split up here in Poplar Bluff. But now, they're changing it so that we meet up halfway between the STLs and our area, then two missionaries go back to the STLs' area, and two go back to our area. So, Sister Reed and one STL stayed in Poplar Bluff, and I went to Fenton Missouri with the other. It's a twenty-four hour exchange, so nothing too crazy, but it was definitely strange to be out of Poplar Bluff and doing missionary work! Obviously, I've been to meetings in other areas of Missouri, but this was my first time teaching, finding, contacting, etc. out of Poplar Bluff.

It was a lot of fun, though. It's definitely different in other areas! Fenton is pretty close to the city. It was a lot... richer. Actually, it probably was very similar to Camas, but it felt a lot richer because I'm so used to Poplar Bluff! It felt a little surreal.

I was glad to go. I learned a lot, and I think that it will make the transition easier when I get transferred out of Poplar Bluff. But I was definitely glad to be back in my own area, with our investigators! Home in the country :)

Friday I headed back to Poplar Bluff! Yay! Long, long car ride, with a lot of rain. Basically, I drove six hours over the course of two days. It was a bit much. But there was a happy reunion with Sister Reed ;) When we got home, we did our weekly planning. Then, we went to a member's home for dinner. These members are awesome. The brother is actually an amateur artist, and he offered to paint a picture for our apartment. That night, we actually got to help paint it! Pretty fun stuff. And I'll be excited to get some more color in our apartment.

I have been so tired this week though. Hooph. It reminds me of being back at college, and feeling perpetually exhausted. I'm usually happy, but also I could usually use a nap.

Sunday was a little rough. Most of our investigators who had said they would come to church didn't. Which was sad. Also, I gave a talk! I think it went pretty well. I was still writing it on my way to church.... I just always dread giving talks so much that I procrastinate way too much. Got to stop doing that. I talked about why I went on a mission, what we do as missionaries, and tied it all to charity. I'm going to send it to you all (Mom Lyv Quinn). It's actually kind of missionary month: one of the elders and I spoke this week, and next week it will be our companions' turn. Our goal this transfer was to really encourage the members to get excited about member missionary work! We have started implementing some new things, and I hope that our work will pay off.

In my personal study, I've finished the Book of Mormon, so I'm starting over again (yay!). This time, I'm studying it a little differently. I really want to STUDY the Book of Mormon. So, I started 1 Nephi 1 on January 7, and I've studied it almost every morning... and I am still on 1 Nephi 1. I think I'll finish it tomorrow! But I'm going through and reading the cross references on every verse, and actually pondering the scriptures. It's been a great experience, and I'm so grateful that I have this time on my mission set aside that I can go this slowly, and it's okay!

One of the verses that I studied was 1 Nephi 1:3: "And I know that the record which I make is true; and I make it with mine own hand; and I make it according to my knowledge." So, I was reading the cross-references, and basically pondering how I personally know that the Book of Mormon is true. We have a lot of testimonies of it! First, Nephi said it's true, along with his descendants, the translator (Joseph Smith), the Three Witnesses, the Eight Witnesses, and millions of Latter-day Saints since it was published in 1830. But really, the only way that I can declare with Nephi that I know that the Book of Mormon, the record of ancient inhabitants of the Americas, is true, is if I follow Moroni's promise: Read the Book of Mormon. Ponder it. Pray about it. That's how I know that the book is true.

It's also been interesting to read the Bible through as I study the beginning of the Book of Mormon. It was a total coincidence, but I was reading in 2 Kings, right where Zedekiah starts to rule, as I was studying these verses. I feel like this time, I have actually understood what's going on! Which makes sense, because the last time I read the Old Testament was when I was a sophomore in high school. I've been enjoying it a lot this time.

Well, life's good I guess. Not much more to say than that! Transfer calls are 11 days away, which is INSANE. I can't believe that. I just looked it up and man oh man, I keep saying time flies, but it really really does. More than four months since I left? 16 P-Days? Almost the end of the transfer?!? I love Sister Reed, and I'm going to be sad when I have to leave her and Poplar Bluff, but I know that there are great things still to come!

Love you all! Miss you loads! I hope that you enjoyed this email... although maybe you preferred the shorter ones from the last three weeks! In that case, whoops! Sorry :)

Sister Barret

Week 15

My face froze off this morning... because it was 7 degrees outside. BRR! I do not like the cold. I wasn't really expecting it to get that cold! Everyone told me that in Poplar Bluff, we wouldn't get much snow, maybe a little freezing rain, it didn't get that cold... And so far, we've had an inch of freezing rain, about six inches of snow, and very cold temperatures. They all lied to me!!! Haha. 

It's not that bad, because we're not outside that much, but let's just say we probably won't be tracting much the next couple of days. 

I forgot to tell you all: On Christmas Eve, we went to a member's home that night, and they shot off fireworks. And they were intense! They live out on a farm, so they could shoot them off without bothering the neighbors too much, and it was like a fifteen minute show. They had some big ones! Probably illegal...

This week has been a little slower than some. I never thought I wouldn't enjoy the holidays this much! But the problem is that people are busy during the holidays, so they don't have as much time to meet with us as usual. I'm ready to get back down to business.

Despite the slowness of the holiday, we had some really amazing lessons. Edna has been progressing well towards baptism. We set up a baptismal calendar with her for January 25th. Transfers are on the 29th, so if I do end up transferring, I'll be able to see her get baptized before I leave! Which is exciting. One of the reasons I'm so excited for her is that she has really been befriended by some of the members of the ward. She doesn't have a car, so she can't drive herself to church, but a couple of the other older sisters have offered to drive her, and she actually sits by them at church! It's a little strange when you get excited because people don't sit by you at church, but here I am, cheering her on for sitting with someone else! 

We also had some really amazing lessons with a young woman we teach. She's been taking the lessons since August, and she's had a lot of ups and downs. Sometimes when an investigator hits those lows, it really hurts a missionary's soul. But this week, a lot of things started clicking with her. She has finally seen more clearly why she should come to church, and though she had to work this Sunday, she promised that she would make it as soon as possible. We think she's going to come talk to the bishop on Wednesday, so that is definitely some progress! 

Overall, lots of exciting things! We had four investigators at church on Sunday, which was awesome.

On New Year's Eve, Sister Reed and I broke out all of the junk food from Christmas, bought "wine" glasses from Dollar Tree, and toasted the New Year with sparkling cranberry juice. 

And watched church movies. Hooray for The Testaments!

On New Year's, we had a zone meeting, and we went back to Lambert's--The famous roll-throwing restaurant!

Good times. 

Well, hope you all are having a lovely New Year! Our church time moved to 10, so hurrah for that! 

Week 14

Ok, I'm really upset, because I started an email to you about ten minutes ago, then the computer glitched or something and I just lost it. And when you only get 60 minutes on a computer... Grrrr. So I'm really sorry that I'm not super responding to the other emails I've gotten, but this email is probably going to be pretty short too. So...

I can't believe Christmas has come and gone. The biggest part I miss is being with family, of course. Christmas to me is all about family--after all, Mary, Joseph and Jesus spent the night together, right? :)

Someone gave us some Christmas treats, and one of them was Divinity. She made it just like Dad used to, chocolate chips and all, so they made me really nostalgic.

We were actually pretty busy on Christmas Eve. Surprisingly few people cancelled on us. We were able to have an after-baptism lesson with a member for our recent convert, which was exciting! But I'm pretty sad, because our recent convert hasn't been to church now for a couple weeks. That's hard. I'm hoping and praying for her. The time of church is switching to 10 instead of 9 starting next week, so hopefully that will help her get to church.

Christmas was a good day as well. We were "off" all day, so we had breakfast as a district. It's always fun to spend time with other missionaries. Then we came home and opened presents (Thanks everyone!). The Tripps (Justin's family) sent me a super nice care package that included....

Lady Beards! Haha

Good times.

We spent the afternoon/evening at a member's home. They were very kind to us, letting us monopolize their computers. And they fed us Vietnamese Christmas food, and let us watch Monsters University. Pretty fun stuff.

We are spending some time organizing our area. We are mapping out the Poplar Bluff ward, and marking on a map where people live. (Thanks for the GPS! Very helpful) Sister Reed is definitely contributing a lot of great new ideas for Poplar Bluff. I'm really enjoying having her as a companion. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ON SATURDAY QUINN!!!!!!!! I'm sorry I didn't send you a card :( I forgot. But I talked a lot about you on Saturday! I can't believe you're thirteen! So old. And so tall. Ugh, it kills me.

We (all the Poplar Bluff missionaries) taught a lesson for third hour this Sunday. We were talking about member involvement. I think that it went pretty well.

I love you all! Sorry my emails keep getting shorter and shorter. I need to work on my typing skills! 

Just got my five minute warning so I'd better send this. Love you all! THanks for the thoughts/emails/Christmas presents.

We named our GPSs. MIne's Ellanantha (the two female voices are Michelle and Samantha)...

Week 13

What a week. Hoo boy. And another short day at the library, with more to share about my week than I could in two hours... Let's see how I do with 23 minutes left. 

Tuesday was my last full day with Sister Richardson! And a lot of our appointments fell through, but hey, that's missionary life! Wednesday was transfer meeting. A super sweet member offered to drive us, even though she had never driven to the city before! She did great, although we were a little worried at first. 

Transfer meeting was a lot of fun, to see all the missionaries in one spot. Okay, not quite all the missionaries, but a lot of them. I met my new companion! She's Sister Reed, and she's from Oregon! Forest Grove. Basically Portland. We actually each know the same person from Camas! Which was fun. She's awesome. A little aggressive, which I like. And she's been out for almost 9 months, so she's been teaching me a lot as well. 

We had a great week. Taught some really wonderful lessons, with two people actually accepting the invitation to be baptized. Our next step is to help these people choose a date and get calendars set up! I'm really excited to be here, with Sister Reed. Sorry this email is going to be super short, I don't have like any time.... haha. 

I'm so excited for Christmas! I can't wait to see you! It's actually been a little distracting the last couple of days, thinking about that. No wonder we're only allowed to do it two times a year! Okay, I'm going to send this before I run out of time. 

Spiritual thought: For God so loved the world that He sent His Only Begotten Son. Remember the real meaning of Christmas! Hope everyone has a lovely one.

Week 12

Okey dokey, I'm going to try to make this a very long email, for a couple of reasons. 1. Last week's was short. 2. It was a very busy week! 3. The community college's library is going to close from this Friday to January 7 (a TUESDAY! Why do they hate us???) so I'm going to have to use the local public library for the next couple weeks. That might mean that I get on a little later than usual, and my emails will probably be shorter too. Lame. Plus, at the local library, if you're not a member, you have to pay. I may just try to get a library card, since that would make it easier.

Of course, you all might hate long emails! Sorry! I'm FORCING you to learn about my life and what's going on in my mission. Enjoy! Can you believe that I've been out for three months? I feel like I was just marveling about being out for two months, or one month... 12 whole P-Days

Actually, I don't even know if some of you even read my emails. Lyvia and Quinn never email me :(

So, last P-Day was disappointing, as I mentioned, because the local community college was closed. That kind of threw our whole day off. It's one thing when you KNOW that you won't be able to email long, it's another when you're not expecting it. This week, I was talking to the librarian here, and he said that, because of the snow, they went ahead and just CANCELLED finals week! Can you believe that? So the grade you had at the end of classes was just your grade. It sounds like something out of Harry Potter :) but that would be terrible if you were going to try to do really well on finals and get your grade up. On Monday, I also made some Lime and Chicken Enchiladas and froze them (because Saturday was Sister Richardson's birthday!). I don't know if I made them right, and I don't know if it was really good to freeze them, but oh well. They tasted good anyway. We also got haircuts at the local Walmart! Hooray for Walmart haircuts!

Now, Tuesday was a long day. We went on exchanges! I don't remember if you remember what exchanges are, but basically, for sisters, it is when the sister training leaders come to your area, and you spend the day with one of them, while your companion goes with their companion. It was very odd. Last time I went on exchanges, I was in a three-person companionship, so it was me, Sister White, and the STL. This time it was just me and the other sister. It has been so long since I've been anywhere without Sister Richardson that I felt very strange. You just get so used to being with your companion! I'm sure that it will just get worse as time goes by. I'll probably get home and be scared to go to the store by myself or something. Or, on the other hand, I'll be so tired of having someone with me all the time that I'll want to just be alone all the time. Hopefully I won't go to either extreme, actually!

But Sister Minyard, the STL, and I had a very good day. She taught me a lot in the short time that we were together. She taught me about tracting (going door to door looking for people to teach). Sister Richardson and I have been receiving kind of mixed messages about tracting. Originally, she was told that we were kind of phasing out tracting. Then, our district leader told us that we were supposed to try to tract for two hours every day. Which is kind of a lot! Basically, what I understand is that we are supposed to tract when we can and to help us find new people when we aren't through other methods. Sister Minyard taught me about how we can really get to know the people who answer the door. We need to view them as individuals, instead of just random people on the street.

Also, our mailman definitely didn't come through the whole storm (Thursday through Monday). So, on Tuesday, we got 9 pieces of mail: I got 2 letters, and Sister Richardson got five letters and a package. That was an unprecedented amount of mail!

I also drove on Tuesday while on exchanges! That was freaky. It's weird to drive again after not driving for so long, but I'm kind of used to it. After all, I never had a car while I was at school. But there was still some ice on the roads, so I was a little nervous.

Our district leader is dying (in missionary terms). So we had our last district meeting with him on Wednesday.

We went to Broseley, a small town to the east, and were trying to visit a less active member. What do you do when the door is four feet off the ground?

Go around back, of course! Even when it's awkward, we don't give up on people.

On Thursday and Friday, we spent a lot of time at the church building. Ward members put up nativity scenes around the church, and so we were there to give church tours. While we were there, we also got to decorate the ward's Christmas tree!

Not the best picture of me, but you get the idea.

The ward Christmas party was Friday as well. It was a dessert potluck. I thought I was going to be sick from eating sugar, but it was good!

And Saturday... the day that we were all waiting for... Transfer calls! bum bum bum... I wonder if transfer calls ever become routine when you're a missionary? I know that my heart started beating faster when the STLs called us Saturday night! It's nerve-wracking. Here's my transfer doctrine: I'm staying in Poplar Bluff! Yay! We're not being whitewashed (when both missionaries are transferred and two completely new missionaries come in). My new companion is Sister Reed. She has been on her mission for nine months now, and she will be follow-up training me. I don't know what that exactly means, other than I'll be junior companion again! Sister Richardson is heading to St Louis, and she's going to be companions with someone from my MTC district! That's pretty cool.

Actually, it's a little weird how you start getting to know people in the mission. I guess there are only around 70 sisters, so it's not that weird... But Sister Reed was training Sister Hobbs, who you might remember as one of my MTC companions. Then their apartment flooded, so they were emergency transferred to other areas. Then apparently Sister Hobbs had to go home for some medical concerns. I found that out this week! I don't know for certainty, since rumors tend to fly when you're three hours from the center of the mission, but that's what I hear. It's sad to hear. She can come back sometime in January, according to the rumors, but I think that I would find it very difficult to come back out on my mission if I had to go home for some reason. I don't know why.

So, since transfer calls, a lot of our work has been having Sister Richardson say good-bye to people. She's been here for six months! One third of her mission. I'm speculating (speculation only!) that I will only be here for the next transfer. I kind of hope that I'm wrong. I like Poplar Bluff, and it's amazing how quick you come to love the people you're serving. But I know that there are people in every area that I will love as well.  

Also, remember that zip line I was describing last week? Well..

Yeah. That doesn't even get all of the pole in the picture.

In my personal study this week, I've been spending my time in Helaman. It's really amazing to read about these people, and to see how they can make the same mistakes over and over again. It's even more amazing, because we find it so difficult at times to recognize that we make those same mistakes! But there was a scripture that I liked. It is talking about the people who were members of the church of God. These are the people who were more humble, while the rest of the professed members of the church were being lifted up by pride. The prideful were persecuting the humble. "Nevertheless they did fast and pray oft, and did wax stronger and strong in their humility, and firmer and firmer in the faith of Christ, unto the filling of their souls with joy and consolation, yea, even to the purifying and the sanctification of their hearts, which sanctification cometh because of their yielding their hearts unto God." (Helaman 3:35)

There's so much that I like about this scripture! First, they fasted and prayed. One thing that I've really realized on my mission is that it is a commandment to fast and pray. It's not a suggestion, or a "hey, these things might help you out! Try them!" Nope, God has commanded us to pray and fast. The reason He did though was to strengthen us!

They were sanctified because they yielded their hearts to God. What does it mean to yield your heart to God? I'm not really sure. I think it is what I'm trying to learn here on my mission. To me, it means not holding anything back. It means that you can't say, "Alright, here's my heart. But I'm going to just keep this one little corner, ok? You can have everything else, but this part right here I'm keeping for me." It has to be a complete submission to God, a complete sacrifice of our selfishness and our wants. Prayer can help with that. The purpose of prayer is to align our will with God's. So every time that we have a meaningful prayer, we should be giving up a little of our selfishness, and a little of our desire to have life go our way.

But the part of this scripture that really stood out to me was the phrase "wax stronger and stronger in their humility." I'd never thought about humility in that way. When I did, I realized that this means that pride is weakness. When a person is prideful, they place more reliance on self than on God... but humans are infinitely weaker than God! No wonder it's called being lifted or puffed up: it's all hot air. One good poke and they'll be deflated. True strength comes from relying on God. It comes from acknowledging that you can do nothing without Him. There are so many scriptures about how God will give people power and strength when they turn to Him and offer their hearts as a sacrifice.

I hope that you are all having a wonderful time preparing for Christmas. Send me pictures of you and your Christmas decorations and your Christmas baking! It doesn't feel much like Christmas for me yet, though Sister Richardson and I have been listening to a lot of Christmas music. I guess Christmas = family in my mind, so I will be thinking of you all a lot! Only 9 days until we get to talk! I'll have more info on that next time, but if nothing else, we can call that day and make sure that everything's all set up. Weird to think about!

Hope everyone enjoys their Christmas break! Have fun baking lots of food and treats. I might try to make fudge today. It's seriously my downfall though. I'm nervous.

Love you all! Merry Christmas! TALK TO YOU SOON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Week 11---Snow!

Well, another transfer is almost over. And that's CRAZY! I can't believe how fast time is going! It feels like this transfer started maybe a week or two ago.

So, some of you (Mom) were freaking out because we started emailing a little late this morning. Let me explain! There has been a lot of...SNOW! And ice.

Yup. On Thursday night, we started getting freezing rain, and then it snowed through most of Friday. This picture was taken near the end of the snowing.

I don't have as much time to email today, because the community college was closed, and we have to be at the public library. They only allow an hour for emailing (or maybe two... we're not really sure). But I got my SD card reader, so I'll try to send more photos than normal!

Monday, we had our district P-Day, and the theme was "Farmville." Just kidding... Mostly. We went out to a member from Dexter's farm, and he showed us around. We watered cows, saw an all-white peacock (it was so cool!), rode around in the back of a truck... And the main attraction was a giant zip line. I did NOT ride it. To get attached, you had to climb what was basically a telephone pole with giant nails sticking out the side. Then you had to stand on a tiny, rickety platform. Nuh uh. I got queasy just looking up at it.

Tuesday was mission conference! We drove to Cape Girardeau, an hour and a half drive, then had six hours of meetings, then drove home. As you might imagine, THAT was a productive day... Haha. Well, it was productive. I learned a lot, but we didn't meet with many people. We learned some new ways to present the lessons, and the mission president's wife, Sister Morgan, taught us about table manners :) Our car got a 92% on the cleanliness checklist. We got docked because our engine was dirty. What? Who knew that you had to clean your engine? Oh well, now I know for next time!

We had a pretty slow week overall, as you might imagine with the weather. Some updates on our investigators...

Edna has been having surgery! She's getting a kidney removed, so she's been in the hospital in Cape. It's sad, because she really wants to get baptized, but she's going to have to wait a while, because she'll have a big old hole in her!

We visited Hannah twice. She's one of our "older" investigators, by which I mean that we have been teaching her for a long time. She's been struggling with many things, and it's going to be hard if we have to drop her. But when someone isn't progressing, and can't make the changes in their life, it can be better for them to not learn more. With greater knowledge comes greater responsibility, right?

We have a new investigator! Maggie is 15 years old, and we actually met her because she came to church with some ward members. That's always exciting, when someone comes to church! We had the first lesson with her and her member friends, and it went really well. She accepted the invitation to be baptized when she learns that the church is true.

That all pretty much happened before....

 That's me, getting ready to head out into the icy snow. Or snowy ice? I don't really know... Haha. But yeah, it got cold. And snowy. Church was fun. There were maybe 25 members there when we started sacrament meeting! So we only ended up having sacrament meeting.

Timeline of snowiness:

 Thursday at about 3:30 we were told that we had to park our cars, because WINTER WAS COMING. At that point, we were getting mostly just rain. Cold rain, but just rain. Then, before we went to bed, we got….

That is ice, by the way.

Then, Friday afternoon, we had that snow you saw before. BRRR.

But Mom, those boots you got me are boss. They keep my feet warm and dry, and they have good traction! And luckily, winter clothing is cute. But when Sister Richardson and I have tried to visit people recently, they look at us like we're crazy. "Why are you two girls out in the snow and cold? Get inside! That's what we're doing!" And seriously, people have been staying inside. It kind of reminds me of Camas when it snows :) The school got let out Thursday morning, and hasn't been back in session since. And obviously the college is closed too.

While the snow/ice was here, we were productive :) We decorated a little for Christmas (see your snowflakes? I've been making some too). Sister Richardson's been knitting. And we baked pie! That is the first pecan pie I have made, and it was delicious. 

You might notice that some of those pecans are small. That's because we actually hand cracked and peeled the pecans. There's a pecan tree in Ashley's backyard, and she gave us some. The pie recipe was from a member we know. We also made a pumpkin pie, because I haven't had any yet this year, and I couldn't let a Thanksgiving go by without pumpkin pie!

Anyway, my time is wrapping up... Spiritual thought time! Haha.

I've been reading in Alma, and I love this scripture. It had never stood out to me before:

"For that which ye do send out shall return unto you again, and be restored; therefore, the word restoration more fully condemneth the sinner and justifieth him not at all." (Alma 41:15)

It's almost like karma. We are sending things out in the world: good or bad feelings, good or bad relationships, good or bad messages. And they will return to us! Not necessarily in this life... In fact, probably NOT in this life. But they will return. So we need to make sure that, if we want good things, we are sending out good things!

Just got a notice that my time is almost up, so I'm going to wrap  this up! Love you all! Keep sending me letters :) And emails! only got a handful of emails this week :( Guilt trip! Guilt trip!

 Keep being missionaries!

Love,

Sister Barret

Week 10--Happy Thanksgiving!

Wow. Ten weeks already??? And it's December?????? Time flies! I'll probably talk about this a ton, but time moves weird on a mission. Some days go soooooooslowwwwwwww because every appointment falls through, you spend time tracting and driving around and you still don't get to teach any lessons, and by 8:30 you and your companion are racking your brains for ANYONE that you haven't tried to visit in the last 24 hours. But then you look back, or in this case, I'm looking back, and I've been in Poplar Bluff for more than two months and I'm coming up on the last two weeks of my second transfer. It's crazy! This week was a pretty good week. Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope everyone's Thanksgiving was wonderful, and full of food. Sister Richardson tried pecan pie for the first time ever, and now she thinks it's wonderful. We might go and buy a pecan pie at Walmart today. I did NOT get any pumpkin pie though! It's crazy, right? No pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, and I went to three different Thanksgiving dinners.Four, actually, if you count the ward party, but I think there was pumpkin pie there, and plus that was like two weeks ago. Forever in missionary terms. That's another thing about "mission time": two weeks ago feels like forever ago. I can hardly remember everything that happened yesterday.

Tuesday, we delivered some boxes of food that the Young Men and Women of the ward made for some of the older single sisters of the ward. One of the boxes was meant for a Sister T, and she's such a great member. She's about 80 years old, and she's the same woman who gave Sister Richardson and I about 8 skirts. She is always giving the missionaries random things, like oatmeal. When we brought the box of food over, she just shook her head. "I told them to stop sending me food!" Then she starts going through the box:"Nope, won't eat that. Here, you take it. Nope, won't eat that either. Ugh, can't eat that, too much heavy syrup." I guess when you reach a certain point, you just know what you do and don't like--and you're not afraid to let everyone know! She is also impossible to escape from! We got there at about 2:45, and we told her straight off the bat that we had an appointment at 3:30 in south side. We barely got out by 3:35, and that was after telling her four times that we had to go. She is just full of stories! I love it.

On Wednesday, we had District Meeting, and I had to give a training. There are usually two trainings every week, one given by a missionary in the district and the other given by the district leader. My topic was "Discerning the Thoughts and Needs of Investigators through the Holy Ghost." I think the lesson went pretty well. I brought candy and passed it around at the start, so that always helps :)

Then... Thanksgiving! I wrote Mom/Lyvia/Quinn a pretty detailed letter about what we did on Thanksgiving, but here's the rundown: We got up at 6:30 (surprise!). We did our regular study schedule until 10, and then it was a free day! As a treat for us, we went shopping at Walmart, and got some stuff to clean our car. We looked at baby clothes (so cute). Then we went to the Dollar Tree, because I bet

Sister Richardson that we could find something there for more than a dollar. She won, because we couldn't find any POSTED prices above a dollar, but I'm still pretty sure that there were some books there that cost more than a dollar. Anyway, then we went home and cleaned our car. It's super clean now :)

Our first Thanksgiving dinner was with the R family. They had six missionaries there total, because our zone leaders came down and ate with them too. The food was delicious. Then a second Thanksgiving dinner! With the P family. They fed us a lot, and we felt fit to burst of too much food. By the end, when I had to eat a piece of delicious pecan pie, I really thought that it would be too much. I felt like I was so full of food that it was filling me all the way up my esophagus. But it wouldn't be a good Thanksgiving if

you didn't feel like that, right?  Then we went back to spend time with the R family just playing games

(not board games though, or video games). At about 7:30, we headed home and spent the rest of the night resting and writing our families.

Friday was a little dreary. All of our appointments fell through, which is always rough. I mean, it was the day after a holiday, so of course people were pretty busy. Never too busy for the gospel, though,

right? Haha. Saturday went well. We tracted and found two new investigators! Yay!

And Sunday was a normal Sunday. A fast Sunday, and none of our investigators came to church, so that was a little sad.

Overall, we kept pretty busy this week, which is good. The secret to missionary work is work, after all! I've already seen that. We are blessed so much more when we work and try our best and do everything

we can than when we just coast along or do the least we can do. On my mission, we try our best to have a plan for every hour, and then we go do our best to make those plans happen. I think that people can feel the Spirit more when they realize how important the gospel is to you, and you show that the gospel is important to you by working hard at it. It's like going to seminary every morning, or reading your

scriptures daily, or doing your visiting teacher. These things are work, and sometimes they can be hard or seem boring. But when we do them, we are showing to ourselves, to others, and to God that we

realize that they are important.

Love you all! Hope that you ate lots of pie and leftovers this week. Good luck giving away your copies of the Book of Mormon--remember, it's a lot easier than you might think!

Get ready for the holiday season! I think that Sister Richardson and I might go caroling with the Young Women this Wednesday--it seems way too early for that!

Sister Barret